April 2008

Creative Ways To Get Your Web Visitors to Opt-In

Today I want to talk about your website as a tool to build your
customer list. And as we all know, if you have a good relationship
with your customer list, they will generally buy from you.

I am completely amazed everyday how many business people
I know, whether they have a dentist office, a wine shop or a
foreign car repair business, few truly understand how to build
a website that will make money for them. Even more amazing
to me is that very few businesses actually make a genuine
attempt to offer their web visitors something of value in return
for their email address. And the businesses that really blow me
away are the ones that are getting lots of unique visitors every
month and aren’t taking advantage of their own traffic.

I think the reason that this is happening is because generally
speaking the people that build websites aren’t marketers. Period.
And few small businesses have the resources to dedicate a full
time web person so the website quite often is built but then
left unmanaged. Well, one point I hope to drive home today
is that every business would be wise to view their website as
an asset that deserves proper management. It can serve to
build the company image, educate customers about your
products or services, build your customer list and drive sales….
all of which are very important.

The good news is that building a customer list is fairly simple
and it will pay off for years to come. Let me give you an example
of a high end wine store I worked with. They have a steady
retail business of selling wines locally and they also sell wines
by the glass or bottle to their patrons who come in on the
weekends to listen to music. I checked out their website and
they don’t have any type of opt-in form. But they do have a lot
of traffic because people want to find out who is playing there
on the weekends. In fact, they didn’t even know their website
was getting as much traffic as it was.

So, I simply suggested that we take advantage of this traffic
and put an opt-in form in the upper right hand corner of their
website near the music venue link. Here are a few ideas I
suggested on how they could get people to opt-in and give
them their email address. One, they could offer a free bottle
of wine under $50 once a month to one lucky winner chosen
at random on their list. The winner would be announced and
the free bottle given away at the last music venue at the
end of the month.

That way not only would people see that it was for real but
it would encourage others to sign up for their list. To further
encourage signups, I suggested that they let people know
the email list would be used to inform them about upcoming
music events and unannounced wine specials.

Another idea I put on the table was that they could build their
opt-in list by offering a guide that paired wines they carry with
recipes for appetizers and main course dishes. It would help
people with their party planning and encourage them to buy
the certain wines mentioned. The 25 page guide was created
by a freelancer hired elance.com for $150. It paid for itself
with two wine purchases!

Hopefully you get the point I am trying to make about how
easy it is to get people to opt-into your mailing list if you
offer them something of perceived value. In this case, it
was a free bottle of nice wine as one incentive and a party
planning guide as the other. If you put your creative hat on,
there a ton of ways to get people to give you’re their email
addresses. We’ll talk about the best way to get an opt-in
form on your web page in the next tutorial but in the
mean time, I hope what I have shared with you today has
gotten you thinking about how to turn your website visitors
into potential buyers by presenting valuable offers in
exchange for their email addresses.